


Flight or Fight

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Little Shop of Horrors - All Media Types
Genre: Audrey and Seymour work through canon trauma, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Post-Canon, chapter 2 can be skipped if you want to avoid that but are otherwise interested in the story, chapter 2 contains descriptions of past rape and sexual abuse, descriptions of past abuse, domestic life, following the movie canon in which Audrey and Seymour survive, lots of ‘I love you’s’, mentions of cruelty towards animals, veers at times into tooth rotting fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:41:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Seymour and Audrey flee Skid Row and get married, in that order.  It’s not the way things are supposed to happen, but given that their happiness was both orchestrated and nearly destroyed by a man-eating plant bent on world domination, they make do.
Relationships: Audrey Fulquard/Seymour Krelborn
Comments: 28
Kudos: 41





	1. Flight

Seymour and Audrey flee Skid Row and get married, in that order. It’s not the way things are supposed to happen, but given that their happiness was both orchestrated and nearly destroyed by a man-eating plant bent on world domination, they make do. 

Their life together starts with a series of Greyhound buses and motel rooms, which they book separate as a nod to propriety. Even so, they end up sleeping together more often than not, either because Audrey comes into Seymour’s room to eat supper with him, and they get to talking and don’t stop till neither of them can keep their eyes open, or because one falls asleep against the other’s shoulder in the midst of those never ending bus rides. 

Audrey’s learning heaps about the world as it whizzes by her. She sees a bird with red feathers at one of the rural rest stops they pass through. She grabs on to Seymour’s arm to point it out, clapping her hands with excitement ‘cause it looks like something out of a picture book, but Seymour jumps as if startled, and she’s overcome with shame. 

She’d made the mistake once of telling Orin that she’d thought pigeons were pretty, with their iridescent wings. He’d laughed at her, called them flying rats, and from that day on made a point of throwing stones at any of them they happened across. 

“I’m sorry Audrey,” Seymour says. “You startled me. I was just thinkin’ is all.” 

Seymour thinks an awful lot these days. Audrey’s been taught that it’s rude to interrupt men when they’re thinking. 

Seymour puts his hand on Audrey’s. “Tell me what you saw,” he says, soft and imploring. 

“It’s stupid.” 

“Nothing that makes you happy will ever be stupid.”

This makes Audrey smile. She looks down at her lap, where their two hands are joined, and gives Seymour’s a squeeze. “There was a bird up in that tree over there. It’s gone now.” 

“What kind of bird?” Seymour asks. 

“I don’t know the first thing about birds,” Audrey admits. “I always wanted to get a canary, even went out and bought the cage, but—” She’d been afraid that Orin would kill it. “I didn’t seem safe,” Audrey finishes, swallowing back the lump in her throat. 

“We’ll get you a canary as soon as we get where we’re goin’,” Seymour promises. “And a dog. You want a dog, don’t you Audrey?” 

“Sure I do,” Audrey says. It’s an understatement. Pretty much her whole life she’s wanted a dog or a cat or even a goldfish. 

A couple of days later, Seymour presents Audrey with a bird book from the Audubon Society, all wrapped up in brown paper. She doesn’t know how he managed to buy it without her noticing, seeing as how the two of them are nearly always together.

“I know it’s kinda clunky,” Seymour says. “You don’t have to lug it around if you don’t wanna, but...”

Audrey throws her arms around Seymour’s neck and kisses him. When she pulls back he looks soft and dazed like he always does whenever their lips touch, and it’s honestly the cutest thing she’s ever seen. 

“I love it,” Audrey promises. 

“I love you,” says Seymour, and they kiss again. 

As their journey continues, Audrey pours over her bird book. It’s the first time she’s really read a book since school, and god knows she’d hardly looked at any of the things she was supposed to be reading back then, too concerned with making sure she and her mama could make ends meet to even show up most of the time. As she flips through the pages and the bus rumbles on, Audrey’s not sure if she could tell the difference between a finch and a tit, but she’s quite certain that the pretty red bird she saw was a cardinal. 

In Connecticut Audrey sees a deer for the first time, and in Massachusetts she catches her first glimpse of the ocean. It confirms her long time belief in a life beyond Skid Row, and makes her feel like a part of it for the first time, albeit a very small one. 

Audrey’s learning heaps about the world, and also heaps about Seymour. She learns that he’s not especially good about changing his socks and that he drools when he sleeps, but she doesn’t mind. Another thing she learns is that he talks in his sleep. That’s a bit more of an issue, what with the criminal investigations around the disappearances of Orin and Mr. Mushnik. If they’re somewhere he might be overheard, Audrey is careful to nudge Seymour awake before his words can attract attention. 

And what words they are! Suddenly Audrey is privy to at least one side of the ethical debates Seymour must’ve had with the plant. Some of it focuses on whether or not bad people deserve to die. It’s a big question. Audrey’s never been able to stomach the idea of the death penalty, but Orin’s murder? That’s terrifyingly easy to stomach in all ways except the lingering feeling of culpability. Audrey knows that she should be better than that, but she’s been an awful person before. She’s done her share of dirty, awful things. She and Seymour are on the verge of escaping from all that, and Audrey has to believe in her heart that once they’re in a good place they’ll also get their chance to be good people. 

On one of their motel nights, Seymour starts sleep talking and Audrey doesn’t wake him right away. There’s nobody around to hear him, and he needs a full night’s rest. Besides, Audrey is curious. 

“Audrey, no,” Seymour mutters, sweaty face pressed against the pillow. “Let her go! My god, Audrey, are you okay?” 

His next words are indistinguishable. Audrey leans in closer to try and hear them, only to almost get hit in the face as Seymour flails his arms and turns over in his sleep. 

“You ate the only thing I ever loved!” Seymour says, crystal clear. “You’re a monster and so am I!” 

Seymour’s face is contorted and pained. Audrey can’t take it. She shakes Seymour awake. 

“It’s okay,” she says, as Seymour’s eyes open.   
“Audrey?”

“I’m right here.”

“But you’re dead.” 

“I’m not. I’m here.” 

“You died and I fed you to...”

Audrey runs her hand down Seymour’s tear stained face. “I’m alive,” she promises. “The plant is dead, and I’m alive.” 

That’s all it takes for Seymour to launch himself upward, wrapping his arms around Audrey, and burying his face in her neck. 

“I’ve done terrible things to Audrey,” Seymour tells her through his tears. “But not to you. Never to you.” 

“I know that,” Audrey promises him. “I know you’d never let anything hurt me. Not in a million years.” 

“But I almost did!” Seymour reminds her, not that she’d ever forget. She’s pretty sure that the Audrey II’s jaws closing around her will be etched in her memory forever, but so will the moment when Seymour came and rescued her. “That stupid vegetable was this close to devouring you whole, and it would’ve been my fault.” 

Audrey reaches for Seymour’s glasses on the bedside table. She wipes at Seymour’s tears with the sleeve of her nightie, and places the glasses on his nose. She holds his head between her hands, and through some tears of her own she smiles. 

“I’m here,” Audrey says. She punctuates the words with a kiss to Seymour’s jaw. “You see me, don’t you? I’m here and I’m alive.” 

Seymour sniffles. 

“You’re alive.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m so sorry for the mess I dragged you into.” 

“It doesn’t matter any more,” Audrey assures him. “We’re here and we’re together. That’s all that matters.”


	2. Freeze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning that this chapter contains descriptions of past rape and sexual trauma. If you want to skip this chapter, you can. The main points you’d need to know to continue are that Audrey and Seymour are married and have a house by the end of it.

There’s something special about New Hampshire. It’s just about the greenest place Audrey’s ever been. 

Portsmouth calls itself a city, even though it’s all grass and forest and ocean, with not a tall building in sight. Audrey and Seymour have a simple town hall wedding, and splurge on a room for the night in this cute little seaside bed and breakfast with mint colored curtains that Audrey’s a little in love with. 

“When we get ourselves a house, I’ll buy you curtains just like those,” Seymour promises.

The bed is nearly as adorable as the curtains. The headboard has seashells carved into it, and it’s covered in a quaint patchwork quilt done up in shades of blue and violet. 

Audrey’d had a friend once, when she was in sixth grade, a red haired girl named Nataly, who came complete with a dad, a mom, a floppy eared dog, and a whole cupboard full of Tupperware. Audrey had slept over at Nataly’s house twice, then Nataly had slept over at her house once. That’s how Nataly’s mother had come to realize that Audrey was a bad girl from a bad family, and put an end to the whole thing. 

Thus far, the nights that Audrey’s been spending with Seymour have felt a lot like those sleepovers, full of talk, whispered secrets, and warm camaraderie. 

She’d almost forgotten about sex, until later that night in the seashell bed with the blue and violet quilt. Seymour gives her a meaningful look as he turns off the lights. Seymour kisses her harder than he ever has before. Audrey kisses him back, because he’s her husband (her husband!) and she loves him. He rests his hand on Audrey’s hip, and all of a sudden she knows just what’s going to happen next. 

“Audrey, are you ready to—? I mean, do you wanna—?”

“Sure.” 

Audrey’s not an expert on many things, but she supposes she’s an expert on sex, albeit an unwitting one. It’d been dark the first time she’d done it, with a man whose name she hadn’t known at a club she’d felt so smug for having snuck into. She hadn’t said yes, but she’d been too drunk and taken aback to say no, mostly in shock that it could happen right there in the corner of the club with people dancing nearby. He’d left a ten dollar bill tucked into her bra, shame in her heart, and an aversion to alcohol which lasted to this day. 

Sleeping with the patrons hadn’t been a part of her job at the Gutter, thank god. Her job had been to project the illusion of wantonness and availability, which she had. She might not’ve been born with money or brains or personality, but she’d been blessed with certain something that she liked to think was _poise_ , even though to hear most men talk the word she was looking for was _a nice rack_. From time to time, when a fella showed up who seemed like he might be able to get her out of Skid Row, she’d make the most of whatever it was she had, not that it’d ever gotten her anywhere. 

Then there’d been Orin, the first guy she’d gone steady with, and her longest relationship to date. He’d had unique tastes and left no room for refusal. Audrey wonders if something like her bird book exists, but for sexual peculiarities. If not, Audrey could write it based on what she learned from Orin alone. 

Audrey’s mind seizes on that bird book as she and Seymour continue to kiss. That’s how she’s always done it, by distracting herself and finding something else to occupy her mind, usually sofas with plastic covers or shiny toasters. This time, though the sofas and the toaster might finally be in reach, she thinks instead about how she’d like to set up a hummingbird feeder someday. The heart rate of a hummingbird, Audrey’s learned very recently, is over one thousand beats per minute. 

“Audrey?” 

Audrey closes her eyes. 

“You alright? You’re breathing real fast.” 

“Fast?” Audrey repeats, mystified. She _is_ breathless, though. She feels like she’s got at least fifty hummingbirds trapped in her chest. Seymour moves as though to brush the hair out of her face, and she backs away reflexively. 

Seymour pulls away as well, putting distance between them. Audrey’s surprised to find herself still clothed. They hadn’t been doing much of anything at all, had they? Just kissing, like they’d done a million times before, which doesn’t make sense. Why is Seymour taking everything so slow? 

Seymour stands up and turns on the light. “Talk to me Audrey. Tell me what’s wrong.” 

“Nothing.” 

The look that Seymour gives her is dubious and confused.

“Everything,” Audrey amends. She covers her face. 

The bed creaks as Seymour sits down at the end of it, still well away from Audrey. Even so, Audrey stands up on shaky legs, and walks over to the window. There’s this terrible need to retreat inside her, and the worst thing about it is how it often bubbles up when things between her and Seymour should be at their very best. 

“Is it something I did?” Seymour asks. 

Audrey shakes her head. 

The silence hangs between them. 

“I’ve never done this before without it hurting,” Audrey finally admits, speaking so quietly that she’s not sure Seymour will even be able to hear her. 

“I’ve never done this before period,” Seymour answers.

For some reason this makes Audrey giggle, only there are tears falling down her face, so maybe what she’s doing is crying. Orin would call her hysterical and hit her to make her snap out of it. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Audrey says, once she’s caught her breath. “I’ve always been able to handle it. I just...”

“If it hurts you, I don’t want to do it. Not ever, if you don’t wanna.” 

“That’s not what I want,”Audrey says. 

“So tell me what you do want, Audrey. A man shouldn’t feel ashamed to be bossed around by his wife.” 

His wife! Seymour sounds so sincere. In spite of everything, Audrey’s heart still soars at those words. 

“Could you just hold me?” Audrey asks. 

“Forever if you want.” 

Seymour does, and Audrey takes the time to calm down, allowing him to lead her back to the bed. Then she opens her mouth and begins to tell Seymour about everything she’s done and everything that’s happened to her. He’s oddly sober afterwards, and Audrey wonders if she’s said too much. He leans back against the headboard of the bed as if overwhelmed, still holding Audrey close. 

“If Orin weren’t already dead and I didn’t know how awful killing people is, I’d kill him.” 

“Sometimes I feel that way too,” Audrey says, and it’s oddly comforting, that she and Seymour have some of the same darkness in them, even if they’ve both decided to never let it out again. 

They pass two more nights in the bed and breakfast, taking a honeymoon of sorts. Seymour never tries to do anything more than kiss Audrey or hold her hand. They never really dated, Audrey realizes. They went almost directly from being friends to being engaged and then married. 

The things that Audrey and Seymour do are exactly what Audrey always imagined and _wished_ dating would be like. They make sand castles on the beach, explore the tide pools, and watch the sunset. They go shopping together, and out to eat. They share a root beer float out of the same cup. 

Eventually they’re back to staying in a motel, while Seymour looks into finding a house for them to rent. A few days into this endeavor, it dawns on Audrey that Seymour has no idea what he’s doing, so she takes over. There are lots of life skills that Seymour doesn’t know, things which Audrey might say Mr. Mushnik deliberately prevented him from knowing, if she were one to speak uncharitably of the dead. 

The landlord describes the place they end up getting as a fixer upper. Audrey sees the potential to make of it everything she’s ever dreamed about. She imagines herself going through the steps it takes to heal the little house, and maybe healing herself along with it. 

Four nights into moving in, she brings Seymour into the shower with her, and makes a tentative attempt at showing and explaining to him how she’d like to be touched. Not a lot happens (though from the way Seymour reacts to it all, it seems as though he’s going through a borderline spiritual experience). What does happen is extremely gentle, extremely kind, and most importantly something that Audrey gets to control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn’t easy to write, so reviews are especially appreciated.
> 
> A lot of it was inspired by how (in the film) during Audrey’s fantasy sequence in _Somewhere that’s Green_ she was dressed in a much less sexualized manner than she is at any other point during the movie, and then it ends with her and Seymour going to sleep in separate beds. I get that the song is going for a 1950’s sitcom aesthetic, and the two beds thing fits with those conventions, but I also think there are reasons why Audrey chooses that aesthetic.


	3. Elephant in the Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: If you skipped the last chapter, the main important thing to know is that Audrey and Seymour are married now.

Control entices Audrey. She’s never had an awful lot of it. Things just happen to her. Bad things. In first grade, her daddy had up and left out of nowhere. In third, she’d gotten ringworm from the mess in her mama’s apartment, and in fifth grade she’d gotten head lice that lasted about eleven months. Even though she’d tried not to drop out of school like so many around her, halfway through ninth grade a price hike from her mom’s landlord had forced her to devote her days to whatever work a kid like her could get. When, on occasion, she’d found a job that she liked, be at at a salon or a coffee joint, that place had always closed down. Whenever she saved money, an unexpected bill would pop up. Whenever there was a place she really wanted to be, fate would conspire to make her arrive late or not at all. 

What Audrey had managed to secure for herself, at the age of twenty-six, was a tiny rental apartment that she didn’t have to share. What she’d cultivated in her years of living in disgusting conditions was the determination to create something nice. If Audrey had a knack for anything, it was interior decorating. She’d scoured thrift shops for copies of Better Homes and Gardens, then continued to scour them for things to bring the glossy visions in her favorite magazine to life. The appliances were out of her reach, but she managed to make a lace table cloth out of the cleaner bits of a stained prom dress from Goodwill, and then she’d bought and shined up a blue telephone to match it. She’d done up the wallpaper herself, and bought plenty of sweet little knickknacks that could’ve been be antiques if she squinted hard enough. 

When Seymour, who doesn’t know much other than botany and retail, gets a job working at a Big Box Furniture Shop, Audrey’s over the moon. He’s got a fifteen percent discount on everything, and store credit so they can purchase things and pay in installments. All those buses and motels had taken most of the money Seymour had been able to salvage from the Audrey II disaster, so this is almost like winning the lottery. 

Audrey gets her toaster, her plastic covered furniture, and her TV. She gets a little pin board, where she tacks up DIY and cooking projects that she sees in magazines, things like folding table napkins into roses, and using stencils to spray paint floral borders on the walls. 

Seymour’s influence on Audrey’s home is unpredictable, but she keeps him in line. He’s not naturally a tidy person, so she needs to remind him not to lie in bed with his shoes on, and not to throw his coat over the chair when he gets home. She’s got to remind him to wake up early enough to take their puppy for a walk, so it doesn’t piddle on the floor.

When it comes time to paper the walls, Audrey has a vision, with pink flowers and green accents painted on the windows. Seymour gets her the materials she needs, which she appreciates. 

He tries to help, which she appreciates less. 

“Just let me do it,” she says, when she sees him trying to put the wallpaper up, all wrinkly and crooked. 

“I’m not a complete slob. I can help out in my own house,” Seymour points out. 

“That’s not what I said. I just don’t want you to do it wrong. We’re going have to look at it every day, after all.” 

“You’re really in deep with all this stuff,” Seymour says. 

Audrey flashes him a bright smile. It’s nice to have her passions noticed. “Just sit back and let me work my magic,” she tells him. She loves how the words taste in her mouth. They’re exactly what a wife should say. This might be the most confident she’s ever felt. 

A few days later, Seymour comes home with the ugliest elephant statue Audrey’s ever seen, not that Audrey’s seen all that many elephant statues. Even so, it comes up to her knees, has wonky eyes, a partially chipped off trunk, bushy eyebrows, and worst of all a tail that looks like it ought to be on a rat. 

“It’s very original,” Audrey says, when Seymour presents it to her. 

He scratches his head, looking down at it bemused. “As soon as I saw him, I felt sorry for him. I had to take him home.” 

“You had to take him to _our_ home?” 

“Who else’s home was I gonna take him to? Besides, I like elephants. One of our sponsors arranged for us to go clean up the bleachers after the circus back when I was at the Skid Row home for boys. We got to walk past all the animals on our way into the tent, and we got to eat all the peanuts people’d dropped on the floor. It might be my best childhood memory.” 

“We’ll put him in the closet,” Audrey suggests. “He’ll be safe there.” 

“I was thinking maybe our bedroom.” 

Audrey nearly chokes. “I know it can’t really watch me while I’m sleeping, but it feels like the kind of thing that’d watch me while I was sleeping.” 

“Well, how’s about the living room, next to the sofa?”

Audrey opens her mouth, then closes it. Even without saying anything, Seymour knows that she disapproves. 

“Never mind. Guess I’ll just stick him in the closet.” 

Audrey kisses him in the cheek, and thinks that’s the end of it. 

Over the coming days, however, Seymour is sullen and strange. When Audrey asks him why, he says it’s something to do with work. She lets it go for a day, and then another. Seymour is as sweet and attentive as ever, but it’s clear that something’s wrong. 

She brings it up again one night while they’re lying in bed together. 

To get his attention, she wraps her arms around him from behind. 

“Talk to me,” she whispers. “What’s got you so peculiar lately?” 

“I’m not peculiar.” 

“Alright then. What’s got you so out of sorts?”

“It’s nothing.”

“If it’s important to you, it’s not nothing,” Audrey says. It’s one of the lines that Seymour always uses on her when she’s too quick to dismiss her own feelings and thoughts. 

“I’m not sure whether or not it’s important.” 

“I still want to know about it. I care about you, Seymour.” 

“It’s about the wallpaper.” 

“What about it?” Audrey asks. Maybe, she thinks, Seymour doesn’t like the color she’s chosen. 

“And... and...” he scrunches up his face in the way he used to when he was trying to screw up the courage to remind Mr. Mushnik that every other Sunday was supposed to be his day off. 

“And....?” Audrey encourages. 

“The elephant. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s hideous, but lately it feels like you want to erase every trace of me from this house, like I’m... I don’t know. Like I’m a pest. Like you wanna hide me in the basement where I can’t mess everything up.” 

“Don’t talk like that! I’d never think an awful thing like that.” 

“You wanted to know how I feel. That’s the long and short of it, pretty much.” 

“I had no idea. Do you want to know how I feel?” 

“Of course I do, only...” 

“...only?”

“Please don’t be mad at me, Audrey.”

“Of course I’m not mad. The best part of living in this house is being here with _you_. I’m not used to being with another person, and having them act like... well, a person. At best the people I’ve kept company with haven’t cared, and at worst they’ve been trying to... I don’t know. Trying to take things away from me... to make it all worse. You and me, we’ve got partnership. I’ve never had anything like it before.”

“A partnership! I’ve never had one of those either. At least not the right kind.” 

Audrey kisses the back of Seymour’s head. “See? We’re together. Please don’t worry.” 

Seymour grasps Audrey’s hand. He’s quiet, but too stiff to be asleep. 

“There’s one other thing,” Seymour says, after several minutes have passed.

“Hmm?”

“I love watching you and your decorating hobby, but it makes me forget how much I miss working with plants. Not the scary kind. At this point, I don’t even trust myself with the strange kind, but Audrey... Is it wrong of me to want to start a garden? Not just wrong... I was thinking I’d like to raise something normal and pretty, some sunflowers or squashes or something like that, but I’m scared I shouldn’t. Am I evil for thinking about it? It’s just that when I worked with the plants it used to give me this sense of calm...”. 

As Seymour speaks, Audrey mulls it over. 

“There are plenty of bad people in this world, but most people aren’t evil, even the ones who do bad things,” she says. “A garden squash isn’t the Audrey II any more than you or I are Joseph Stalin. If you can grow a garden full of only good things, then I say you should grow your garden.” 

“What if everything I touch turns bad?” 

Audrey pulls on Seymour’s shoulder, so he’ll turn over to face her. He’s so sincere that it almost hurts to look at him. 

“You remember the first time you got me down in that basement of yours, to look at your plants? I was scared to go down there at first. I didn’t know you yet, y’know, or what you wanted. I said ‘yes’ ‘cause sometimes it feels better to just agree than to refuse to do something then end up doing it anyway. So we went down those creaky stairs of yours, and it was all secluded like, y’know? But then you had this wall full of plants, and you didn’t try anything on me, just showed me how you took care of ‘em all. And you were so gentle with them, and they were growing so good, and even though they were in old coffee pots and bean cans, I just got this feeling that they were happy. You know what I thought then?”

Seymour shakes his head. 

“I thought to myself, I’d just found the one good man in all of Skid Row.” 

Seymour cups Audrey’s cheek. “I had no idea it was so hard for you to say no to people. I’m glad you told me to put that elephant in the closet, instead of letting me just stick it wherever I wanted.” 

“I had no idea I was making you feel unwanted, I’ll tell you what— I’ve been wanting to hang some paintings in the living room. Why don’t you pick ‘em out? Then we’ll get some seeds afterwards.”

“You’d trust me to do all that?”

“Sure.” 

“Thanks Audrey. You’re real great to talk to.”

“You’re great to talk to, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback always welcome.
> 
> (Please?)


	4. Chapter 4

The first indication that Audrey and Seymour’s picture perfect life may be coming to an end comes when Seymour finds a suspicious pod tucked in among the thriving roses he grows out by the fence. Audrey doesn’t get a chance to see it in all of its glory. Instead, when Seymour doesn’t come in for dinner, she ventures outside to find him crouched besides the smashed remains of something green, his head in his hands. She puts her hand on his shoulders, and kneels down beside him, picking up a stray stick to poke at whatever it is. There’s something red and suspiciously tongue-like amongst the wreckage. 

“It’s not,” says Audrey. 

“It can’t be.” 

“But if it is...?”  
The question hangs in the air. Neither one of them eats much that evening. Seymour takes down all of his old plant books, and scours them for _anything_ that might resemble the Audrey II without being the Audrey II. 

He’s up all night. Audrey stays awake until nearly three in the morning, flitting around the house cleaning everything from the refrigerator to the doorknobs, the way she used to do in her skid row apartment whenever she caught sight of a rat or a roach. Eventually she falls asleep on the couch. Come morning, Seymour is red-eyed and listless, still holding the book in his hands, but no longer looking at it. Audrey sits down in his chair with him, wrapping her arms around his midsection. 

“Go to bed,” she says. “I’ll call into work to let them know you won’t be coming in.” 

“...Supposing it was an Audrey II...”

“Supposing it was?”

“And supposing there was more...”

“More?”

“First off, they’d need somebody who could figure out what they ate. I only found out by accident, when I pricked my finger nearby it.”

“Then they’d need somebody who was willing to feed them.”

“Then, when it started to grow, they’d need somebody who was ready to kill them...”

“Or somebody with accident prone enemies.” 

Seymour rubs the back of his neck. “Seems we got two possibilities. Either people will feed the plants and we’ll have a problem on our hands, or else I’m one of the worst people in the world and no one else would do the things I’ve done.” 

“Or maybe the thing you saw wasn’t an Audrey II.” 

Seymour rubs his eyes. “God I hope it wasn’t.” 

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Audrey promises.

They do. 

For several months, nothing happens. They live on borrowed peace. 

An Audrey II emerges in Cleveland. One night the news says the situation is under control. The next night it speaks of untold destruction and dozens of the plants throughout Idaho. 

“It’s gotta stop,” says Seymour. “I have to be the one to stop it.” 

“ _We’ve_ got to be the ones to stop it.” 

Seymour places his hand over Audrey’s. “None of this is your fault, Audrey. I’m not going to ask you to give up everything you dreamed of to fight a losing battle against a bunch of bloodthirsty plants. One of ‘em almost snapped you away from me once. I can’t let something like that happen again. The is my f—”

Seymour can’t finish his thoughts, as Audrey breaks him off with a hard kiss on the lips. Even after she pulls away, she continues to cup his face. 

“Everything I ever dreamed of is you. Besides, it’s not right to sit here and do nothing. How many times in my life have I just let things happen, even knowing they weren’t right? Maybe it’s my time to stand up and change something.” 

They spend the rest of the night planning and packing. They’ll take axes, guns, and rat poison. Electricity is what killed their first monster, so they’ll look into ways to pack or produce that. They’ll get Seymour on TV and in the papers again somehow. 

As they shut the door on their little house the next morning, Audrey clings to the belief that they’re not sacrificing their happy ending, but rather setting out to earn it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s all! This chapter is short, but hopefully it wraps up this part of Audrey and Seymour’s adventure in a satisfying way. Comments on this chapter or on the story in general are appreciated.


End file.
